On the trail of the Sankey Canal Passes
by Dr. Frank O'Reilly

The trail started when I, a new SCARS member and resident in London, though having spent my younger days by the canal's banks in Dallam, saw a notice in the Societies Diary in the May issue of Coin News for a talk on Pass for the St. Helens Canal and Railway Company at the Manchester Central Library under the auspices of the Lancashire and Cheshire Numismatic Society.

Since I could not attend, I dropped a line to Peter Keen. The fact that nobody from SCARS knew about this local event and nobody could attend it and in fact that the talk did not take place is actually immaterial to the tale.

Peter Keen wondered if the "Manchester Library Pass" was the same as the one lodged in the Warrington Reference Library's Archive, allowing a certain Mr. Duffield free passage along the railway. This Duffield Pass has featured in Canal Cuttings in the past and much has been uncovered, not least that Duffield may have been Mr. C.E. Driffield, the local coroner, who had not infrequently to deal with fatal industrial accidents along the route. (Our thanks to Warrington's Local History Library for allowing us to photograph the Pass, above)

I succeeded in making contact with the numismatist (Mr Bob Lyall, of Warrington) who was to have given the Manchester talk and it became clear that his pass was not the Driffield Pass. In fact, whereas the Driffield Pass is a small card, this one is a brass pass, the size of an old half crown. On the obverse side it reads "St. Helens Canal Railway Pass Check". On the reverse is an "1840s engine 2-2-2 with big wheels." It is countermarked 1/5 and pierced so that it could be hung as a watch chain. (This vivid description was given me over the phone; I have not actually seen this brass item.) (Mr Lyall was very willing to allow SCARS to photograph the brass pass, see above).

It was my understanding that there is a dearth of passes, tokens and medallions associated with the Sankey Canal and so I somewhat idly googled "St. Helens Canal Pass" on the library computer and was directed to the website (www.yesrail.co.uk) of Yesteryear Railwayana of Ramsgate, Kent. They had a "St. Helens Canal Outward Pass Ticket", which I purchased very cheaply. Made of card, about 2.25 inches by 1.25 inches, (Left) this to me looks more like the type of ordinary railway ticket you would purchase at Warrington Central in the 1950s for a trip to Liverpool (modern railway tickets are a different kettle of fish entirely and, much more uniform and less sturdy, are probably of no collectible interest whatsoever) and it has been punched; which means it has been used, though it is in pristine condition. However, it has spaces for name and number, which suggests a personal pass, though these slots are blank. It bears the number 3283 and has the word "light" in the bottom right hand corner. The reverse is blank.

So, these three very different passes all pose puzzles. I think, however, that there are lessons to be learnt from this frustrating Trail of the Pass.

In the first place, in the red corner we have a body of canal enthusiast and in the blue corner stand the community of numismatics, which encompasses tokens, medallions, jetons and passes as well as coins. Probably these two groups do not normally communicate with each other; perhaps they should. It is unfair to generalize, but, probably, the numismatic interest is in the item itself and how it relates historically and economically to other similar items. It is an item to be catalogued, collected and traded and its comparative rarity and monetary value are, if not of paramount interest, of substantial concern. For the canal enthusiast, however, the item, which he wants to know about and see but not necessarily to value or possess, provides an historical clue to commercial life around the canal environs at a particular point in time. These two approaches do appear to complement one another.

The second lesson in these days of eBay and unprecedented mass interest in "collectibles" is that items relating to the Sankey Canal are not necessarily to be found in the expected geographical and classificatory space.

Finally, it is most unlikely that these passes are "one offs". Therefore, there is probably a lot more "Sankeyana" somewhere out there. Happy hunting!

Editor's Note: Thanks to Dr O'Reilly for contributing the above article. It would certainly be useful if anyone with internet access were to scour the world wide web from time to time to see if any Sankey related items appear... and let us know what they come across.

From the illustrations opposite readers will see that we have secured images of the two other items which Dr. O'Reilly mentions - the Driffield Railway Pass and the brass Pass Check owned by Bob Lyall. We would welcome further comments about either of these items.

As far as the Pass Dr. O'Reilly has acquired is concerned, we should note that it is a "Canal Pass", even though it was issued by a railway company. The fact that it is headed "LM&SR" enables us to say that it is post-1923, when the 120 railway companies in Britain were grouped into just four Companies, and the London, Midland and Scottish Railway absorbed the London & North Western Railway, which had itself taken over the St. Helens Canal & Railway Co. in 1864. (It's interesting to not the aberrant apostrophe in the "St. Helen's" written around the brass check.) We might also conjecture that the Canal Pass was issued before the post-WW2 nationalisation of the railways and canals... but in those days of austerity obsolete items such as this may have continued to be used until stocks ran out, even though the railways and the canals were being run by completely different bodies.

As far as we know the Sankey/St. Helens Canal was not used for passenger-carrying. It is therefore unlikely that this Pass is a ticket to ride, as the other two certainly seem to be. The endorsement "Light" would seem to indicate that the Pass is actually for a vessel, rather than a person. Given that in the period it was probably issued (say, 1923 - 1948), the main traffic on the canal was the carriage of sugar to the Sankey Sugar Works, and that there was no back-load available, and that charges for the use of the waterway were based on the type and weight of cargo carried, what we appear to have here is a ticket for an empty boat to travel down the canal. If the space for a Name had been filled in, we would know for sure...

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